Aggressive panhandling ordinance is dead

The Seattle City Council was unable to override Mayor Mike McGinn’s veto of the controversial panhandling ordinance, voting along the same lines Monday as last month, and coming up short on votes to overturn the veto.

With Councilman Richard Conlin absent, the council voted four to four in favor of overturning the veto. Six votes were needed. The vote was the same as last month’s vote on the issue, in which City Council members Conlin, Tim Burgess, Sally Bagshaw, Sally Clark and Jean Godden had voted in favor of C.B. 116807, which would have allowed police to give $50 fines to aggressive beggars.

Voting against were Council members Nick Licata, Tom Rasmussen, Bruce Harrell and Mike O’Brien.

Introduced by Burgess, the measure also said people can’t block someone, use threatening or aggressive gestures or profane language, solicit someone using an ATM or repeatedly solicit someone who has already said “no.”

The measure was supported by the downtown business community, which says unruly street people make shoppers and residents feel unsafe. It was opposed by the local ACLU, NAACP, prominent Democratic politicians and local Democratic precincts, who said it blamed poor people for Seattle’s economic woes.

A divided City Council had passed the measure last month, with the key vote coming from O’Brien, who had opposed the idea, then supported it, then flipped again and voted “no.” McGinn then vetoed the bill, saying he was concerned for the potential of “uneven application” of the law.

He noted that the city already had a law against aggressive panhandling and said the intimidating behavior defined in the proposed law was “inherently subjective.”

“Although being asked for money on the street can be uncomfortable, it isn’t illegal and the Supreme Court has said repeatedly that this is protected speech,” McGinn wrote to the Council.

“Using physical contact or verbal abuse to cajole someone into giving money is already
against the law, and the proposed ordinance won’t do anything to address this beyond what current law already allows.”